Coming to Verona

Friday, June 7

We walked (comfortably, as there were no stairs; see previous day) to the vaporetto.  (Truth be told, the steps in the B&B from our room down to street level were sufficiently difficult to make up for it.)

We caught the 11:00 train for Verona.  This train had some of the oldest wagons of all the trains we had taken.  We looked for a car that appeared to be comfortable and claimed our seats.

Quiz: what was I supposed to do before boarding the train?  (Keep reading for the answer, if you haven't been paying attention and don't know.)

We settled in to enjoy the scenery and prepare to visit Verona.  After it was too late I discovered that -- yet again -- I had forgotten to validate my ticket on the platform.  Off I went through the train to find the conductor to avoid the fine.  If the air conditioning had not failed on this train trip, it would have been as smooth as our other trips -- if considerably more crowded.

Musing on our visit so far we came to the recognition that after a day or two in each location we had mastered an impressive set of arcane skills -- skills that we would probably never have to apply again in our lives:
 - the streetcar network in Milan
 - the winding streets in Siena
 - the electric mini-bus in Florence
 - the vaporetti in Venice
 - the trains, including reading the schedules and remembering to validate the ticket

Our taxi ride took us to the nicest B&B of our journey.  Gianlucca, the proprietor, has turned his condo into a business, maintaining a VERY clean and well-situated establishment.  Our room was called "Paris."  We learned from Gianlucca that the agency that oversees guest houses requires (why?) that the rooms be thematically named.  This B&B used place names, and the artwork inside the rooms related to the location.  In Venice we had been in the Puccini room, while other rooms were named for other composers.

The B&B was situated on a pretty, landscaped city square where we were puzzled to see a large number of elderly people on the park benches or walking around.  At first we thought that their companions might be their adult children, but we soon concluded that they were, for the most part, caretakers.

After a picnic, we walked into the city center, about 1 km.  The many tree-lined streets outside the city center have large homes, mostly from the 19th century.  It is a good town for strolling.

Street performers and artists are numerous in all the tourist areas.  Aside from the standard mime

acts, such as bicycle riders, Charlie Chaplin, and other famous personalities from film and history, we saw people dressed like famous statues or paintings, especially in Florence.  In Verona we saw people dressed as mummies.  By far the most impressive act was a man seated on the ground apparently -- using only one hand -- holding up his partner. a woman seated above him, with nothing more than a stick held in his hand.  One of us (not me) figured out the physics of this little act.  I have to say: "very clever" to have devised it and to have figured it out.

While we strolled through the city center, we passed the synagogue to make sure that we knew its location, since we planned to attend serviced this evening.

The town is not hectic like the tourist cities.  It is pleasant and relatively small and easy to negotiate.  The primarily renaissance city center has structures from every era from the Roman Empire to the 21st Century.  We visited the Arena di Verona first.  This, and a couple of other structures are vestiges of the Roman period.  The Arena is in active use, with music and theater productions on a regular schedule.  The city gates are also Roman.

The best known attraction in Verona is the house of Juliet -- where Romeo supposedly saw his love on the balcony.  There really was a family in Verona that feuded with another family, and possibly even threatened to marry across familial lines.  In any event, the house we visited was owned by one of the families, and the family name is so similar to the name in the story that just about everyone assumes that it is Juliet's house.  It must be true, since I saw my love on the balcony.

Too bad that the star-crossed lovers were from warring families.  I can see how this lovely little town engenders l'amore.  For our part, we overcame our warring families long ago; the Ashkenazim get along fine with the Sephardim.  What could be better than gefillte fish followed by arroz con pollo?

After walking a lot, and having our daily gelato, we ambled back to the B&B and dressed for shul.  We walked to the synagogue (about a km or so), and we were among the first ones there.  (Is that unusual??)  The building was constructed in the mid-19th Century, but finishing touches were not made until 1929, just about when Mussolini began his harassment of Jews in Italy.

They warmly greeted us, and the first person to engage us in conversation was a conversion candidate.  In a community of about 50 Jewish families, what would inspire a Catholic to become Jewish?  It is unbelievably difficult to be a Jew in places like small-town Italy.  Soon another American couple arrived, as well as the rest of the regulars.

They set up a mechitza down the middle of the room, as the womens' gallery is no longer in use.  Eventually they reached a minyan, and began the service, led entirely by the rabbi.  The granite and marble building with its cavernous interior echoed the davening to the extent that it was nearly impossible to follow without an intimate familiarity with the service.

In addition, the orthodox siddur had only Hebrew -- not a single word of Italian, English, or any other language.  Thus, one had to read the instructions indicating what to include or exclude and what page followed in Hebrew.  Most of the congregation was lost, and simply listened to the rabbi.

The seats were not made for comfort.  There is an old Yiddish expression "es ist schwer zu sei a Yid" (It's hard to be a Jew), but I didn't know that the saying applied to the seats in shul.

I understood fewer than 10 words of the rabbi's dvar, but we all smiled and pretended.  I did understand that kiddush was sponsored by someone celebrating a first anniversary.  We met the young American and his Italian wife as well as her parents at the oneg.  He offered to show us and recommend some restaurants, and we took him up on his offer.  We went to dinner with the Americans, Michael and Peggy from Sonoma, CA.

At dinner I took another chance and ordered stuffed zucchini blossoms.  With melted cheese inside, the blossoms were interesting, but didn't have a particularly interesting flavor.  After a pleasant, several hour dinner, we parted company and walked back to our B&B at about 11:00.